CAP Server Statistics - Feb. & Mar. 2010

CAP Leader

Most people are aware that Smogon changed servers in March, but very few people realize that I moved the CAP battle server to a new machine in March too. You might have noticed that the CAP server has very little lag, even during times when the Smogon Tour spills over to CAP. And more important than that -- the CAP server is down much less than in the past. Anyway, the server move made it harder than normal for compiling stats.

The Usage and Lead Statistics for February and March (separate, not combined) are contained in the posts immediately below this one. Enjoy the stats!

Glaie needs more love? How about Floatzel, who's basically the Ultimate Anti-Lead in the teir, being able to stop rocks from everything, and fare well against most leads.

Anyway, a few things about NU show just how centralised it is. Even with so few players, THIS sort of thing, as well a general concensus, adds fuel to the fire:

Febuary
Skuntank: 44.49%
Slowking: 33.21%
Miltank: 26.93%

Personally, I think all three of them are suspects. However, all three of them make decent checks and counters to two things that most of the NU community belive are broken:

Espeon: 18.66%
Magmortar: 14.91%

So, Slowking's being used twice as much as the thing it's the best check for, and Skuntank's being used twice as much as the thing it's the best check for. Either the fear of these two pokemon has caused every team to run some form of check, or, they're useful enough to centralise NU themselves, and thus, are probobly suspects as well.

This is further emphasised in March:

Skuntank: 44.98%
Slowking: 39.63%
Primeape: 30.99%

Wait a second, #2's almost 9% above #3? Especially when #3 makes a helf decent check? Sure, Espeon and Magmortar rose this month, but not quite the leap Slowking had.

NU is horribly centralised, and something has to go, even if Project NU does it's own suspect test, without Smogon, something HAS to go to fix this centraliastion.

Yes Glalie needs more love, well played bulky Glalie can Taunt common SRers, couple it with a Gligar to take on Fighting moves, and you have assured SR + Spikes on your side of the field, which is completely devastating if youre using an offensive team that puts pressure on your opponent to not let them spin. Also Explosion is just so cool.

wait, so... arghonaut is officially the least-used cap ?___? was NOT expecting that one.

i wish we could tell how many of the cap's uses were for pure novelty value and how many of them were used based on how good they are. could we maybe subtract one usage for every unique battler that used each capmon? i know it would be a crude system but it might give us an interesting set of results.

The other thing about Spikes in NU is that they free you up to use Sub + 3 attacks Espeon, combining the Skuntank-beating power of a Sub Espeon with the coverage of a three-attack variant. Spike support is necessary to 2HKO Slowking.

Floatzel is a very strong lead but it doesn't have the same team synergy as, say, Primeape or Medicham. Notice the popularisation of LeadCham, and Cham in general, during March - I have to admit playing a part in that.

Something to note is the fact that pokes that are high in usage are paired with other high-usage pokes a disproportionate amount of the time. Looking at the top five Miltank teammates:

You'll notice that they're all the same, and in the same order, but all having increased in usage by a huge 20-30% percentage point margin. This reflects the fact that there is a larger rebellious deviation in NU - refusing to use top pokemon just for the sake of it - than in other tiers.

Incidentally, Medicham/Primeape/Slowking/Miltank/Skuntank/Espeon was a team I was using at one point.

Two things:
a. I can never say this enough. thanks for the stats Doug!
b. Ice, just how much did you ladder this month? Look at the teammate stats for all the pokemon in team shatterdawn. Its your team. times 6. Wow.

After Missy is banned Gastly jumps up to number 3, whilst Duskull still sits low, and Drifloon even lower (WTF), nice. As usual it Gligar reins over LC...
That aside, what I find most interesting is that only 1 of the top 10 sits at the 19 speed mark. Lc certainly has changed....

Wow, Arghonaut behind both Syclant and Cyclohm in terms of usage for both months; that's insane. Arghonaut is excellent and a staple in many of my teams. Big round of applause for the usage on Kitsunoh and how it's being used, which is excellent.

Generally pleased with what I see here, nothing too shocking given how much I play and what I see people use. The big bouncing of the top 6 on CAP isn't surprising either, since people experiment with new things and new teams, so their usages will inevitably fluctuate.

Also, huge shout-out to lead Fidgit, kicking ass and taking names up to the #3 spot in leads! That definitely contributed to it shooting up to surpass even Stratagem in usage at #2. You can also see how much testing on LeadOak people were doing back in February with it being the most-used lead. It fell a bit in March with how Fidgit was spiking as a lead, but I predict that it'll be back on the rise in April.

Two things:
a. I can never say this enough. thanks for the stats Doug!
b. Ice, just how much did you ladder this month? Look at the teammate stats for all the pokemon in team shatterdawn. Its your team. times 6. Wow.

Click to expand...

I didn't actually ladder as much this month - it just shows how much faster successful trends spread through a metagame with so few people in it.

ULTRA Moderator

Thanks so much for the stats Doug! We all appreciate the hard work you do for us.

I think that it's cool that Soil and Gem are apparently so dominant. I'm a little surprised that Arghonaut is so far down the usage list, but I suppose the #1-used Pokemon being one of the best stallbreakers hurts it a lot. I think it's a little ironic that Fidgit, the ultimate utility Pokemon, can still take second place when the #1 Pokemon was specifically designed to STOP pokemon like Fidgit.